What's the biggest challenge in colonizing Mars?

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

Social justice, apparently, is the big challenge facing us when colonizing foreign planets.  It's not finding oxygen or water, not staying warm or avoiding radiation, not the challenge of getting people to other planets alive and healthy. 

Racism and sexism and inequality are the big concerns we need to think about.  And we're not thinking about them enough.  And talk, too.  We need to talk about them more.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/the-lay-scientist/2015/may/06/how-can-our-future-mars-colonies-be-free-of-sexism-and-racism

To paraphrase Douglas Adams: “Space is white. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly white it is.” It’s also very male and European.

And it’s there, unspoken and unchallenged, at the heart of our current aspirations for space. There’s no room for discussion about social justice or equality when it comes to planning our future Mars colonies because we all just assume that decent educated scientists and engineers – the “right kind” of people – won’t have any problem with that sort of thing.

The first woman to be raped in space has probably already been born. And if that last sentence makes you howl with protest or insist that such a thing just wouldn’t happen, then I’d stop a second and ask yourself why.

[AJ Dual]

And of course the "problem" isn't the dark side of "the human condition", or exporting it to space, it's the people who use words like "progressive" in their zeal to eliminate all problems, inevitably create ones that are much, much worse.

People think the gulags in Siberia were bad...

[vaskidmark]

I find it amusing that all those who are talking/writing/wringing hands over the problems of an activity such as colonizing Mars (or holding a day care center bake sale) also know what the answers are but are not volunteering to go to Mars/participate in the bake sale.

stay safe.

[Perd Hapley]

Gives new meaning to, "In space, no one can hear you scream."

A nation that worries about having too many cisgendered, heterosexual, Eurocentric white, male astronauts is not likely to reach another planet. They will simply leave more room for other, less hand-wringing nations, who care even less about who gets space-raped. In space, no one can hear your transgendered, spotted-owl-kin perspective.

[brimic]

We will never get to the colonization of mars if we waste all of our resources on earth trying to guilt each other into paying the way for people who should be too dumb to exist in the first place.

[MillCreek]

Perhaps we should take a page from the British and use convicts, etc. to colonize Mars.  We can call it 'New Australia'.

[griz]

I only made it about halfway through the article before giving up due to a fear of my brain rotting from within.  But what got my attention was the argument wasn't about why a particular person might be better to go on a long space flight (hint: smaller creatures weigh less and use less oxygen) but instead the argument was more along the lines of "white men have had their turn, now we need to be fair and send somebody else".  Fair is where you go to get cotton candy.

[Viking]

Can we put these people on a space ship and aim it at the Sun?

[brimic]

Can we put these people on a space ship and aim it at the Sun?

All of them?
I like the way you think 

[lee n. field]

Perhaps we should take a page from the British and use convicts, etc. to colonize Mars.  We can call it 'New Australia'.

I do like that.

[HankB]

#1 problem in colonizing Mars is social justice spending on Earth and political correctness in NASA; in the US we're flushing over one trillion dollars a year - that's, $1,000,000,000,000.00 - down the endless sewer of "means tested entitlement programs" for which we get nothing. (This does NOT include Social Security!!)

This is what cut the Apollo Program short, it's why we have the ISS in orbit today rather than a large "wheel" like in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey . . . and it's why under Obama the USA HAS LOST ITS MANNED SPACEFLIGHT CAPABILITY.      <string of expletives>

[freakazoid]

#1 problem in colonizing Mars is social justice spending on Earth and political correctness in NASA; in the US we're flushing over one trillion dollars a year - that's, $1,000,000,000,000.00 - down the endless sewer of "means tested entitlement programs" for which we get nothing. (This does NOT include Social Security!!)

This is what cut the Apollo Program short, it's why we have the ISS in orbit today rather than a large "wheel" like in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey . . . and it's why under Obama the USA HAS LOST ITS MANNED SPACEFLIGHT CAPABILITY.      <string of expletives>

Thank God for companies like Virgin and SpaceX.